E-text prepared by David Edwards, Ernest Schaal,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from scanned images of public domain material generously made available by
Microsoft's Live Search Books
| Note: | Images of the original pages were available through the Microsoft Search Book project, which was discontinued by Microsoft in 2008. These images, or a remarkably similar set, are now available though Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/marvelousexploit00laugiala |
The Marvelous Exploits of
Paul Bunyan
AS TOLD IN THE CAMPS
OF THE WHITE PINE LUMBERMEN FOR
GENERATIONS
DURING WHICH TIME THE LOGGERS
HAVE PIONEERED THE WAY THROUGH
THE NORTH WOODS
FROM MAINE TO CALIFORNIA
Collected from Various Sources and
Embellished for Publication
Text and Illustrations
By
W. B. Laughead
Published for the Amusement
of our Friends by
The RED RIVER LUMBER COMPANY
MINNEAPOLIS, WESTWOOD, CAL., CHICAGO,
LOS ANGELES -:- SAN FRANCISCO
NINETEEN TWENTY-TWO
PAUL Bunyan is the hero of lumbercamp whoppers that have beenhanded down for generations. These stories, never heard outsidethe haunts of the lumberjack until recent years, are now beingcollected by learned educators and literary authorities who declarethat Paul Bunyan is "the only American myth."
The best authorities never recounted Paul Bunyan's exploits innarrative form. They made their statements more impressive bydropping them casually, in an off hand way, as if in reference toactual events of common knowledge. To over awe the greenhornin the bunkshanty, or the paper-collar stiffs and home guards inthe saloons, a group of lumberjacks would remember meeting eachother in the camps of Paul Bunyan. With painful accuracy theyestablished the exact time and place, "on the Big Onion the winterof the blue snow" or "at Shot Gunderson's camp on the Tadpole theyear of the sourdough drive." They elaborated on the old themesand new stories were born in lying contests where the heights of extemporaneousinvention were reached.
In these conversations the lumberjack often took on the mannerismsof the French Canadian. This was apparently done withoutspecial intent and no reason for it can be given except for a similarityin the mock seriousness of their statements and the anti-climaxof the bulls that were made, with the braggadocio of the habitant.Some investigators trace the origin of Paul Bunyan to Eastern Canada.Who can say?